Johnny Depp Talks Wes Craven At Black Mass Q&A [Audio]

Johnny Depp took questions at a rare public Q&A on Monday night at a screening of his Warner Bros. film Black Mass, which is due in theaters September 18th, at the Toronto International Film Festival. Depp plays Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger in the movie, turned reflective for a moment when a fan asked him about the late director Wes Craven casting him in his breakthrough role in the original Nightmare on Elm Street.

“Wes Craven was the guy who gave me my start, from my perspective, for almost no reason in particular,” Depp said of the horror-movie legend who died at 76 from brain cancer last month. “I read scenes with his daughter when I auditioned for the part. At the time, I was a musician. I wasn’t really acting. It was not anything very near to my brain or my heart, which is pretty much how it remains to this day. But Wes Craven was brave enough to give me the gig based on his daughter’s opinion, I guess she had read with a bunch of actors, and after the casting sessions, she said, ‘No, that’s the guy.’ I always think of her for putting me in this mess, and certainly Wes Craven for being very brave to give me this gig. He was a good man — so rest in peace, old Wes.”

Black Mass is a 2015 American crime film directed by Scott Cooper and written by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, based on the 2001 book Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill. The film stars Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Jesse Plemons, Peter Sarsgaard, Rory Cochrane, Adam Scott, Dakota Johnson, and Corey Stoll.